


Animal Crackers

by vindivher



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: 32 year old Iwaizumi is at his limit, Future Fic, M/M, New Zealand, Post-Time Skip, lamb births
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-03
Updated: 2020-11-03
Packaged: 2021-03-08 23:29:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,228
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27374989
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vindivher/pseuds/vindivher
Summary: Just as a newborn lamb learns the sweetness of spring grass, there's something equally as quenching about the death of the past.(Or, 14 years later, they're helping give birth to lambs in someplace half-way between Tokyo and San Juan.)
Relationships: Iwaizumi Hajime/Oikawa Tooru
Comments: 3
Kudos: 19





	Animal Crackers

It's kind of like looking at the years through a kaleidoscope; two maybe strangers in an airport, (Iwaizumi doesn't know enough about 32 year old Oikawa to refute that) and when he holds it just right, it's Iwaizumi Hajime seeing Oikawa Tooru stepping onto the court like the ocean surging inwards. But here's the secret behind all that blue magic: Oikawa truly could have been anyone else in this airport because Iwaizumi doesn't even recognize him until he's the one found first.

\---

New Zealand Septembers are rain, wind and then more rain.

Even after stuffing themselves into a beanie, scarf, two pairs of socks, gumboots and a too-large raincoat, following the dark figure of Michael towards the looming shed is like going into war. Still, Iwaizumi somehow remains soft with sleep when they finally cross the great gulf of mud and enter into the shed. It's at the sight before them that they finally remember the initial excitement at being awoken at 4 am with the news.

The first lamb of spring and the fifth of the year lies in the blood of his mother's womb, weak with the labour of its birth.

Michael herds them both closer like they are lambs themselves until they are sinking their knees into the soft crunch of hay before the bloody creature.

2 weeks ago Iwaizumi left Japan behind and Oikawa left Argentina - the two of them meeting somewhere in the middle where Oikawa's name held no other connotation other than STRANGER. It'd been months, almost a year since Iwaizumi had last seen him in the flesh. To go from utter absence to sleeping in the same room, breathing the same strange air and waking up to each other just across the room had been a surprisingly difficult adjustment. Those emptied months, Iwaizumi had kept Oikawa's absence from being occupied by someone else, not so much for anything else other than the fact that Japan was 12 hours into a future of territory not yet claimed by Oikawa. When others asked, however, he never mentioned his name, maintaining a Venn diagram with overlapping loops of coincidence between Oikawa's absence and the perpetual singular indentation in his double bed.

With the steadfast creep of dawn, the lamb rises to its trembling legs as if propelled by some ancient knowledge-some bone deep instinct passed down from womb to womb. There's no danger here, the world is at rest but his attempts are desperate yet dauntless and they can do nothing but watch.

"Care for breakfast yet, you two?" Michael says, his voice pinching at the magic in the air, letting it empty out behind him through the doors.

Oikawa rises quietly before him, hands braced against his knee.

\---

Bokuto and Hinata still text him often, of mundane things that Iwaizumi has no idea how to respond to and life updates that make his heart feel full on their behalf. Bokuto is married and expecting a daughter and Hinata has gone back to university to study sports philosophy. He couldn't be happier for them, that they're content and even more so that they're still willing to share it with him after he'd left with barely a good-bye.

When Iwaizumi had packed his suitcase full of nothing but clothes and bought a one-way ticket to New Zealand 2 weeks ago, Bokuto had asked him why he was throwing everything away. Iwaizumi had sent him some googled photo of a snow-capped mountain he didn't even know the name of and left his answer at that. For the first time in his life, Iwaizumi had had no plan whatsoever, just a country and the final thought that this had simply been a long time coming. He wouldn't exactly call it patience but he'd called Oikawa's name at everything - the first breath of winter mornings, the curvature of other setters' nails, the return journey to Miyagi during New Years. In truth, love had already known them by name and so somehow he'd been able to live through the hunger just barely until he couldn't.

The dramatic ordeal at the airport still makes him gag at random times of the day.

Years of only seeing him through the net had honed his desire to a precision point; a scalpel cutting into the flesh of love, millimeter by millimeter so that he might survive to touch Oikawa again. And finally, at the airport, he'd let it all pour out of him. The shape of his desire suddenly an elephant, bruising thing that had rushed him forwards without any other thought.

It might have looked like a highway collision to other people - how hard he'd gripped Oikawa like it was salvation, how his eyes had burned and he'd had to heave for gulps of air. The whole affair had been so traumatic and life-altering that both of them had made a silent agreement not to touch each other again.

Today, he holds his phone up to the wind and sends Bokuto a terrible picture of the farm across the velvet of dawn coloured fields.

"Is that Shoyou?" Oikawa asks over his bite of eggs on toast. Upon their arrival, Oikawa had turned his nose up at the scratchy, dry bread that New Zealanders supposedly accepted as food. He no longer starts his day without popping two slices of bread into the rusty toaster.

"No, Bokuto is asking me if they have houses here," Iwaizumi says, taking his bite of the same eggs on toast.

"Why wouldn't they?" Oikawa sneers, "Sorry, but Bokuto's a donkey."

"Don't call him that. This is just, unfortunately, his idea of a joke."

"Well he's not very funny," Oikawa says, chewing around the last corner bite and shaking his hands of crumbs, "give me your phone, I wanna text Shoyou." He extends his still oily hand and makes hurrying motions which Iwaizumi ignores.

"Go text him on your own shitty android." Iwaizumi swats at his hand.

"I want to subtly let him know that we're having so much fun together." 

"I bet he doesn't even remember who you are."

At that Oikawa sniffs, leaning back against the rickety chair with the mismatching legs.

"We basically got married in Rio so he'd better."

"Is that what you're calling it?" Iwaizumi cocks an amused eyebrow at him.

Oikawa has a moment where the colour drains from his face and then he doesn't look at him anymore after that, walking past him to do both their dishes by hand so he can buy himself time. Iwaizumi yields. They haven't talked about it yet - that they've both loved people that aren't each other. Iwaizumi wants to ask him if he also kept his bed cold according to some nonsense principle but he's terrified of either possible answer.

\---

This is the second time he's woken up tonight. Sometimes wind whips against the old wooden house and the weak frame shakes and croons like a rocking chair, which at first had kept Iwaizumi up for hours during the first few days. This isn't that. In the ambiguity of the night, Iwaizumi hears the shallow breathing and almost dismisses it. It isn't until he's pulled out of the haze of sleep that he realizes that Oikawa is crying.

Iwaizumi stares blindly up at the ceiling, frozen with doubt.

Finally, it's Oikawa's broken voice calling out his name that makes Iwaizumi shove his woollen blankets aside and step out onto the carpet and he feels like he's been plunged in the pacific with how engulfing the cold is. Iwaizumi feels his way through the dark, his heart beating to the sounds of you! you! you!

His knee collides with Oikawa's bed frame and his hands slide over the blanket and then Oikawa's face, wet and warm and real in the night.

"Oikawa."

"Iwa-chan?" Oikawa's voice comes, matching his own in roughness.

"Yeah, it's me," Iwaizumi answers.

"What are you doing? Go back to bed."

"I heard you crying," he says carefully, "you were crying and calling my name."

Oikawa's hand wraps around his wrist, closing completely around it and Iwaizumi startles at the unfamiliar touch.

"Oh," he sniffles, "I'm fine, I'm sorry I woke you up. Please go back to bed."

Iwaizumi's eyes finally see Oikawa's silhouette and then Oikawa's hand loosens around his wrists, sliding away and immediately something monstrous rises like battery acid in his throat to fill in his losses.

"Are you sure?" His voice comes like a stranger and he's not completely sure what he's asking.

When they'd first arrived he'd been so sure that this would be enough - to be by Oikawa's side, to become those people others simply thought were two best friends living the rest of their lives together but the absolute truth of it is a sickening thing.

He can almost see the curve of Oikawa's nose and mouth now. His lips part against the darkness but no answer comes and Iwaizumi burns up from the inside.

There's another small noise, this time a hiss and then Oikawa laughs and answers with a hand clamped around his wrist, pulling him forward and forward until Iwaizumi is spilling everywhere onto his bed, all that monstrous starving desire like hot oil burning the both of them.

Iwaizumi is hot with shame in the split second that they see each other when Oikawa flicks on his lamp. Iwaizumi throws it all away in favour of being on top of him, kissing him so that all 32 years worth of love is carried out of him and into Oikawa. His mouth is full of the taste of absence come to fruition and he licks into Oikawa's mouth, again and again, chasing after the bittersweet fruit. 

Iwaizumi has to stop for a second, overcome with too much feeling, pulling off of him unwillingly. Under the waxen light of the lamp, Oikawa is simultaneously the image of his high school wet dreams and his adulthood guilt and shame.

When Iwaizumi was younger, he'd wondered why some people who very clearly loved each other went their separate ways but Iwaizumi finally understands when Oikawa is not just Oikawa Tooru but Atsumu as well. He wonders if Oikawa sees Hinata in him as well.

\---

Spring in New Zealand can only be described as tumultuous. The islands out in the big, bad Pacific Ocean bear it all on its lonesome.

Iwaizumi slips out of Oikawa's bed as dawn breaks like a bruise. He shivers against the damp air, the vague smell of mould deep-set in the wooden panels made pronounced by the night of heavy rain. As he sluggishly climbs back into his own freezing bed, he allows himself a second of panicked absurdity. What would they do if Michael had walked in on them last night or even this morning with Oikawa's larger body curled around his? What would he think? There's an overwhelming urge to explain himself ahead of any potential consequences. Don't misunderstand. We've waited for each other for 32 years. You don't understand the severity of the sex. Realistically, they would just leave this all behind but Iwaizumi sits upright in his bed, head and heart racing until his clock finally reads 7 o'clock.

As residual rainwater drains completely off the roof and the sun climbs over the mountain peaks and in through the cracks in the blinds over Oikawa's sleeping form, Iwaizumi makes to go downstairs. If he is to be punished, he would not like it to be in front of Oikawa.

"Hey," Oikawa croons sleepily, halting Iwaizumi halfway through the door by voice alone, "can you come here again?"

Iwaizumi feels it appropriate to take a moment to inhale sharply and let his forehead fall against the door. When he's ready, he clicks the door closed and moves into the spot Oikawa has made for him.

"Michael could come in at any moment." He says even as he lays his head on Oikawa's arm and presses his face into his shoulder, the simple act of lying in bed with Oikawa being a violently miraculous thing. He remembers a twitter meme, 'inside you, there are two wolves' and thinks that perhaps in him there is one wolf that wants to devour Oikawa whole without thought and another that surrenders completely to the fear that there is something wrong with them. How convenient it would be if he was made with no wolves inside him at all.

"What are you so afraid of, we don't even know anyone here," Oikawa laughs into his hair, "it's just us on this island", he pauses, "if things go right, probably just the two of us forever."

"You're right." It doesn't sound remotely revelatory even though surely it goes against everything the world wanted for them. Still, Iwaizumi rolls over, away from the overwhelming heat of their bodies pressed together.

"So are we dating or what?", Oikawa grins.

"Do they even call it that at this age?"

"Are senior citizens not allowed to have love lives?"

"We are not even close to senior citizens."

"Maybe not you, but I'm fully retired. I've been wrung dry by the sporting world, Iwa-chan."

Iwaizumi treads on carefully. "You still have another 30 or so years to do something else."

Oikawa laughs, a devasting smile on his face.

"What else could I possibly do?"

So maybe this is that one dreadful, haunting question Iwaizumi had been hoping he wouldn't ask. After all, the bloodless, unclosing wound of it has never yielded anything to Iwaizumi no matter the prodding. Because Oikawa is too obsessive, because Oikawa wants too many things, because Oikawa does not deserve this - it's always been a blank autopsy riddled only with hypotheticals.

"What do you want to do?", he asks, keeping his voice very still.

"Be in love with you!" Oikawa coos and hugs him closer like he didn't just ask the single most depressing question Iwaizumi has ever known.

"Seriously you dumbass," Iwaizumi says, shrugging himself free of his crushing grip, "you know I'll do everything to support you, whatever it is you want to do."

"Ok, so let's give it our all to dating then! And then we can get married and have sex every day and night and then get a dog since we can't have gross little gorilla children!"

Iwaizumi sighs. There's this thing Oikawa does that he'd almost forgotten about. Like pressing a thumb against a bruise or like carving the movements of a single serve out of your body until it can no longer comprehend the pain - as resilient outsiders mistake him to be, Oikawa Tooru was born desperate and hateful and falling into himself comes as natural as breathing. He doesn't know why he thought Oikawa would ever outgrow it. Now that he's older, it's easier to admit that there's nothing he can say when Oikawa doesn't want to tolerate himself.

"Honestly," Oikawa says through the quiet, "I don't know what I would've done if you hadn't brought me here. I think I did nothing but breathe in the dust from my room every day for those 3 years after retirement."

Iwaizumi's eyes track around the room. The rumpled mass of fading blue curtains drawn back by a threadbare ribbon. Children's books inside of and on top of and fallen out of the choking bookshelf, all gathering dust. The bottom of the wooden door dented by repeated ricochet against the spring doorstop.

"And don't say I could've come back to Japan, I would have rather died than have to see everything I'd missed out on. I really can't say I hated living in agonizing ignorance."

The chipping, white window frame. Oikawa's clothes on the floor. The single stool. Guilt.

Iwaizumi blinks. There it is again. Everything is so hard to look at.

"Even now," Iwaizumi's voice comes like he hasn't used it in years, "would you still rather die than come back to Tokyo with me? I only have Japanese citizenship."

Oikawa is quiet then, the pause punctuated by the sound of birds. "I don't know if I can face Ushijima and Kageyama." He admits slowly.

"You don't have to. We could go back to Miyagi, or somewhere even further."

"We should just stay here forever." Oikawa laughs, adjusting his arm.

It's the way he says it that leaves Iwaizumi prickling, like the reckless abandon of a paper plane thrown for someone to decide to catch or let it nose dive. The laugh that carries with it 32 years worth of artefacts; blood on their toddler knees and in the grass, the deflated basketballs and soccer balls in the garage, a shelf with school textbooks riddled with inside jokes in black marker, the empty car park of their high school, the hiding spot next to the abandoned pool where he tried his first cigarette that stained his finger with the smell for the rest of the day, the cell phone that contains the sparse messages exchanged with half the world between them. No matter how long he looks into the telescope of their youth, 16 years in between slices his timeline into pre-absence, absence, post absence; Oikawa's presence dictates the chapter markers in his life.

Iwaizumi remembers something careless Atsumu had asked him once.

"Don't you miss Oikawa Tooru?"

And Iwaizumi had shrugged past the resounding, thundering yes and said instead, "I'm sure he's living it up in Argentina."

Atsumu had laughed like he knew it all. "That doesn't answer my question at all Iwaizumi-kun. From what others told me, you guys seemed like the type of people to chase each other to the ends of the earth except right now he's been away in Argentina for what, 6 years now, doing God knows what in retirement."

Iwaizumi remembers the jealousy he'd had to repress, the countless nights he'd been kept awake by fruitless imagination of what Oikawa's life would look like at that moment. He remembers knowing somehow knowing that Oikawa wouldn't be alright in retirement but being so stubborn in his belief that he had to prove a non-existing someone out there that he could live without Oikawa that he hadn't even thought to visit him.

And the knock-out line is that even as he tried to live on without Oikawa, the space between the two of them had become a sentient thing, haunting the shape of Iwaizumi's whole life. Even with Oikawa halfway across the world, he lived on in Tokyo because Iwaizumi still existed, serving legacy to the image of him.

He can see it so clearly now - Oikawa's room he's never been inside of; the four corners becoming the extent of his tiny world, 3 years worth of dust gathered up from windows and curtains never being opened.

So, Iwaizumi realizes, this is it.

"If that's what you want, then we will." He says and it's the most painless thing ever. He's spent so much of his life denying himself Oikawa that the years previous seem almost worthless in the face of a future together.

"Let's stay here forever", he says.

Because I've shaped my entire career to becoming the fulfilment of my promise to you. Because you needed me more than I ever needed you. 

"The two of us on this island with the sheep and the stupid, cardboard bread."

\---

It's the fifth time; the two of trudging behind Michael through the trenches of the morning wetness that is the north field. He's going to miss the dark brooding shape of the sheep shed.

Iwaizumi sniffles. It's their last week on Michael's farm before they make their way someplace north. Michael has told them a great deal about the dying Franz Josef glaciers that are whittling away every year, about the city rebuilt on containers after crumbling to earthquakes, and about the very tip of New Zealand where the great oceans colliding can be seen from a lonesome lighthouse. He'd wanted to tell Bokuto about all these places he hadn't even been to.

Bokuto wouldn't be interested though, just last night he'd spammed Iwaizumi with messages asking for his return. Iwaizumi hadn't responded, leaving him with a seen mark that he knew he'd be fuming over.

Under the dim yellow lights of the shed, a ewe heaves with the pains of bringing life into the world.

Iwaizumi stands close to Oikawa as Michael kneels into the hay and pulls on the lamb's legs with his bare hands. Last night, Oikawa had joked about buying a farmhouse and do what Michael does for the rest of their lives. He's not sure he himself could stick his whole hand into a sheep to help it give birth but looking at Oikawa, he's not sure he was entirely joking. He wonders if Michael is the same sort of person to Oikawa that José Blanco had been.

The ewe gives another push and the lamb, wet and pink crashes into the world in a tidal wave of blood.

All the times he's witnessed birth, he'd felt like his heart would disappear from his body, like the magnitude of life carves out a piece of his own life. Except for this time, it's different.

Unlike all the other lambs that had struggled from the pull of some ancient instinct, this one lays quietly in the hay. Despite it all, the mother still tongues its little body dry of blood as if death eludes her completely.

Last night Iwaizumi had spent hours kissing Oikawa - his hands, his shoulders, the balls of his ankles, his knees, over the silver-mouthed mark of a lifetime of pain and ambition. Had anyone in Argentina tongued at his knee the same way, knowing that no matter how much you pressed your lips against it in prayer you would never be able to carry out that pain and ambition for him?

Iwaizumi wants to cry, wants to lay where the ewe lays, wants to sleep forever.

It's Oikawa that slaps a firm hand against his back and follows Michael out of this place of death.

"You're horrified aren't you?" Oikawa asks him gently.

"How could I not be?"

"You really are softer than you look," Oikawa chuckles, "I'm glad though, Iwa-chan. That it's this soft guy I waited 16 years for. I'm glad that everything happened the way it did."

And it's really just that, the fact that it doesn't matter that Oikawa spent 3 years away from the world. He was born crying and screaming and burning and that is how he'll go, knowing that every moment of his life he will have to get back up and run for his life. Even without volleyball Oikawa is the grand king, the image of victory changing with every step he takes.

Oikawa looks at him and in his eyes, 32 years takes shape now; Oikawa Tooru built in the image of God, Oikawa Tooru the burning lamb, Oikawa Tooru the champion of Iwaizumi's childhood and adolescence and adulthood.

The white sun spills over everything that the moment has touched and Iwaizumi shades his eyes against the watery iridescence of it. He looks out into the north field; at the spotting of grey sheep, at the mist rising with the dawn, at the lopsided farmhouse, at the golden wisps of cloud formation. He looks at everything and sees that somehow the world has changed and amongst it all is Oikawa, 2 weeks since rebirth into Iwaizumi's life, 2 weeks since he decided to be selfish for the both of them.

\---

Hey Bokuto, it's me. Oikawa and I are still in New Zealand, probably will be for a long time. Oikawa loves it here. Every day we wake up to the smell of sheep shit and eat dry bread for breakfast and sometimes we help sheep give birth. The lambs are really cute, like little smelly babies wearing woollen jackets. So yeah, I'm going to be selfish doing what I want and wake up every day to sheep shit haha.

I'm sorry for just leaving without even saying goodbye but I think you get it somewhat.

Oikawa wears oversized, scratchy jumpers and gumboots and gets his hair covered in hay and smells like shit all the time. 18 year old Oikawa Tooru would faint if he saw him now. It doesn't suit that stupidly good-looking face of his but sometimes I see him heaving hay or studying English by lamplight and I feel like breaking down. I still don't think he's completely happy because he's still the same guy but I can see glimpses of a future where he isn't breaking himself apart. I mean everyone has only ever known him for his grand dreams but there's finally something he wants for his own happiness I want t to be able to come to an end where I can face God and tell him that it was an honour to watch Oikawa grow up and grow old so I'm going to stay here in this strange country with him until that day.

Hopefully one day I'll be able to take you and your wife and daughter around New Zealand showing you all the beauty and love that Oikawa found here.

See you soon.

\---

Iwaizumi washes his mouth of iron and lets the old ache of all the years flow back out into the Pacific because just as a newborn lamb learns the sweetness of spring grass, there's something equally as quenching about the death of the past.

**Author's Note:**

> This is largely unedited so there's probably quite a few mistakes here and there but nevertheless, I hope that you enjoyed! Despite not having yet caught up with the manga at all, I had to pay some sort of homage to my favourite characters although I am in the process of writing something a lot longer for them as a proper farewell.
> 
> Thank you for reading!


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